Apiary and Cloudways

Overview

This integration connects Apiary and Cloudways so that the applications and domains you host on Cloudways appear inside Apiary’s domain control plane, next to everything else you run. The operational problem is not “we need another hosting tool.” It is that the estate of domains, certificates, DNS records, and email posture is spread across many providers, and Cloudways is just one of them. Without a central view, teams log into the Cloudways console server by server to check what is live, what is expiring, and what is healthy.

It is worth evaluating because it turns a scattered, manual checking habit into continuous, centralised monitoring. Apiary already pulls domains across registrars, DNS, hosting, and mail providers into a single dashboard; adding Cloudways means the applications hosted there are tracked the same way, with the same health, expiry, and alerting, rather than being a blind spot that only the hosting console can see.

Business Context and Core Use Case

The primary use case is straightforward: surface every Cloudways-hosted application and its domains inside Apiary so the team can monitor SSL, expiry, DNS records, and email authentication centrally instead of inside the Cloudways console. Common examples include an agency running dozens of client WordPress sites on Cloudways, a product team hosting several applications across multiple servers, or an operations function that needs to know which certificates renew this month and which domains expire this quarter, regardless of where each one is hosted.

Without this integration, teams rely on manual checks: someone logs into Cloudways, opens each application, confirms the certificate is valid, notes the domain, and then mentally reconciles that against the domains held with other providers. That friction is easy to underestimate. It causes lapsed certificates, missed renewals, and DNS or email-authentication drift that goes unnoticed until something breaks. The people who benefit most are teams running fleets: agencies, managed-service providers, and in-house platform teams that maintain many sites at once.

The outcomes are practical: one dashboard for the whole estate, earlier warning of expiries and certificate problems, consistent visibility of DNS and email posture, and far fewer server-by-server logins just to confirm everything is healthy.

The Applications Involved

Apiary (from apiary.swarmlabs.io) is a domains, hosting, and email control plane. It pulls every domain you run — across registrars, DNS, hosting, and mail providers — into one dashboard, showing health, expiry, and records at a glance, and it monitors DNS and email authentication including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. In this pattern, Apiary’s role is to be the single place where the whole estate is observed and where alerts are raised.

Cloudways (from cloudways.com) is managed cloud hosting, the platform many agencies use to host client WordPress sites and applications across a fleet of servers. In this pattern, Cloudways remains the place where applications are deployed and managed, while it provides Apiary with read access to the applications and domains it hosts so they can be monitored centrally rather than only from the Cloudways console.

How the Integration Works (Conceptual Flow)

Conceptually, the flow starts when Cloudways is connected to Apiary with read access. Apiary then discovers the applications hosted on Cloudways and the domains attached to them, and begins tracking their posture continuously alongside every other provider already in the dashboard.

• Connect: connect Cloudways to Apiary with read-only, scoped access so Apiary can see the hosted applications and their domains.
• Discovery: Apiary discovers the Cloudways-hosted applications and the domains associated with each one, importing them into the central inventory.
• Monitoring: Apiary tracks SSL certificates and expiry dates, DNS records, and email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) for the discovered domains.
• Alerting: Apiary raises alerts on upcoming expiries, certificate problems, and changes to DNS or email posture before they cause an outage.
• Central view: the Cloudways assets appear next to every other registrar, host, and mail provider, so the whole estate is monitored in one dashboard.

The fleet example fits naturally here: an agency hosting many client sites on Cloudways stops logging into the console server by server and instead watches certificates, domains, and email posture centrally in Apiary. The key design point is that Apiary complements Cloudways — it observes and alerts, while Cloudways remains where the applications are actually hosted and managed.

Immediate Operational Value

The most immediate value is the elimination of server-by-server checking. For teams running fleets, confirming that every application is healthy is constant, low-visibility work: opening the Cloudways console, checking each application, and reconciling it against domains held elsewhere. Bringing Cloudways into Apiary changes daily behaviour in a few concrete ways:

• One dashboard: Cloudways-hosted applications and domains sit next to every other provider, so there is a single place to see the whole estate.
• Earlier warning: SSL and domain expiries are surfaced ahead of time, so renewals happen on schedule instead of after an outage.
• Consistent posture checks: DNS records and email authentication are monitored the same way across all hosts, including Cloudways.
• Fewer console logins: routine health checking moves from the Cloudways console to Apiary’s central view, reducing manual effort.

In practice, the biggest improvement is confidence: the team can trust that nothing in the Cloudways fleet is silently expiring or drifting, because it is monitored centrally with alerts rather than checked by hand.

Security, Access, and Governance

This integration reads metadata about the applications, domains, certificates, and DNS that you host on Cloudways. Treat it like a controlled, read-only monitoring connection rather than a management tool.

• Read-only access: Apiary connects to Cloudways with read-only, scoped access. It observes and reports on the hosted applications and domains; it does not deploy, change, or manage them.
• Complements, not replaces: Apiary complements Cloudways rather than replacing it. Cloudways remains the system where applications are hosted and administered, while Apiary provides centralised monitoring and alerting.
• Scoped credentials: use a dedicated, least-privilege connection so monitoring does not depend on a personal account and access can be revoked cleanly when needed.
• Multi-account fleets: where a team runs several Cloudways accounts, connect each one so the full fleet is visible in Apiary without broadening any single credential’s scope.

Because the connection is read-only and scoped, the integration adds visibility without adding risk to the hosting environment. The monitoring layer can see what is live and what is expiring while leaving control of the applications firmly within Cloudways.

Summary

Connecting Apiary to Cloudways brings the applications and domains you host on Cloudways into one central control plane, monitored alongside every other registrar, host, and mail provider. The value is practical: one dashboard for the whole estate, earlier warning of SSL and domain expiries, consistent DNS and email-authentication checks, and far fewer server-by-server logins. The connection is read-only and scoped, so it complements Cloudways rather than replacing it — Cloudways stays the place where applications are hosted, while Apiary watches health, expiry, and posture and raises alerts before problems surface.

Example workflow

An agency connects its Cloudways account to Apiary, which discovers every hosted application and its domains; Apiary then tracks SSL, expiry, DNS, and email auth, and alerts the team weeks before a certificate or domain is due to lapse — all next to the rest of the estate.

Frequently asked questions